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Archives for January 2019

Oberlin Winter Term Opera:
Proving Up — a quest for the American Dream

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by Mike Telin

The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged people seeking the dream of owning their own land to move west — the only cost was a filing fee of $18. Would-be homesteaders had to be at least 21 years of age or the head of a household in order to claim 160 acres of “free land.” (That included women and African-Americans after the 14th Amendment.) In exchange, homesteaders agreed to live on and farm the land, build a home, and make improvements for a period of five years, after which they would be eligible to “prove up.”

The sacrifices made in one family’s pursuit of the American Dream in the shadow of Civil War Nebraska is the subject for the most recent collaboration between composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek. On Thursday, January 31 at 7:30 pm in Wilder Main Lounge, Oberlin Winter Term Opera will present Proving Up, directed by Christopher Mirto. Performances continue through February 5 with free admission, but tickets are required. Cleveland Opera Theater will sponsor a talk-back and reception with the composer and librettist following the February 4 performance as part of the company’s {NOW} Fest ‘19.

“Rehearsals are going great,” Mirto said during a recent telephone conversation. “I think we’re in very good shape. I’m really excited because the opera is only a year old, and these are the first performances since it finished its commission cycle.” [Read more…]

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra: fifteen minutes with Daniel Meyer

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by Daniel Hathaway

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra will present music by Osvaldo Golijov, Anton Bruckner, Antonio Vivaldi, and Franz Schubert in concerts this weekend at Rocky River Presbyterian Church (Friday, February 1) and Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights (Saturday, February 2), both at 7:30 pm.

I reached conductor Daniel Meyer on the road between his home in Pittsburgh and one of his regular podium positions in Erie, where he was rehearsing for a concert last weekend with the Erie Philharmonic. I started by congratulating him on his recent appointment as conductor of the Lakeside Symphony.

Daniel Meyer: I’ve been looking for a summer home for a while. My family loves Lakeside, and I’m very excited to have the opportunity to work there. One promising thing is its collaborative possibilities. We’re looking to expand what we do.

DH: Besides Erie, what other conducting positions do you hold down at the moment?

DM: I also conduct the Westmoreland Symphony just outside of Pittsburgh. I just got back from a guest appearance in Silicon Valley with the former San José Symphony. [Read more…]

Oberlin in NYC: the College Choir and Orchestra visit Carnegie Hall (Jan. 19)

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by Jarrett Hoffman

The audience may have been more restrained than the appreciatively foot-stomping listeners who typically pack into Finney Chapel back home — but not by much. The crowd in New York’s Carnegie Hall gave two ensembles from Oberlin College and Conservatory a warm reception on January 19, with loud cheers and even some shoutouts to the players onstage. All well-deserved.

[Read more…]

Four Apollo’s Fire violinists take on Biber’s Mystery Sonatas

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by Daniel Hathaway

Tell your friends you’re headed to a Biber concert and their thoughts will immediately turn to a certain Canadian pop star. There’s another Biber, of course, probably famous only in early music circles, and Apollo’s Fire will treat its audiences to a good chunk of one of his violin masterworks this weekend.

Violinists Carrie Krause, Johanna Novom, Adriane Post, and Karina Schmitz will take turns playing nine of the fifteen virtuosic pieces that make up Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s “Rosary” Sonatas — musical meditations on the five Joyful Mysteries, the five Sorrowful Mysteries, and the five Glorious Mysteries of the life of Christ. Probably written in the 1670s, but unknown to modern ears until first published in 1905, the devotional work is preserved in a beautiful manuscript held in the Bavarian State Library.

The sonatas are pictorial and expressive, but a special feature of the collection is Biber’s requirement that the violin strings be re-tuned for most of the pieces after the first sonata. This practice is called scordatura. “What I love about it is that it changes the resonance of the instrument so much,” Karina Schmitz said in a telephone conversation. [Read more…]

Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project presents violist Ammie Brod and flutist Kenneth Cox

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Violist Ammie Brod embarked on a commissioning project after an almost miraculous encounter with a work of art. Flutist Kenneth Cox is a strong believer in programming music by minority composers.

Those two musicians will split the bill in a recital of solo music on Saturday, February 2 at 5:00 pm at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland. The event is part of the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project’s free concert series, and includes a pre-concert chat at 4:00 pm.

There’s no more textbook “eureka” moment than when Brod, a member of Chicago-based Ensemble Dal Niente, happened upon Beth Lipman’s Laid Table (Still Life with Metal Pitcher) at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

During a recent phone call, Brod said it was “like getting hit in the head with something.” She had been thinking about a potential project and was trying to put it into words. “I turned the corner, and I was like, ‘Oh, everything makes sense now.’”

[Read more…]

Tuesday Musical: Inon Barnatan & Calidore Quartet play Bach (Jan. 22)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Historically Informed Performance movement has made such an impact that the idea of performing Bach fugues and keyboard concertos with piano and string quartet seems like a throwback to the mid-20th century. But Inon Barnatan and the Calidore String Quartet used their modern instruments to fine effect in their January 22 all-Bach program on the Tuesday Musical series in Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall. [Read more…]

Carl Topilow and the Cleveland Pops Orchestra play “John Williams: Cinema’s Greatest Music”

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by Jarrett Hoffman

The music of the prolific film composer John Williams was a staple of Carl Topilow’s programming long before he launched the Cleveland Pops Orchestra. “We were doing Star Wars medleys in the late ‘70s with the Denver Symphony — now the Colorado Symphony,” the conductor told us during an interview in January of 2016.

On Saturday, February 2 at 8:00 pm at Severance Hall, Topilow and the Cleveland Pops will honor Williams “and his incredible contributions to the world of music,” as the conductor told us recently over email. Tickets are available here.

“In the span of six decades, John Williams has composed some of the most popular, inspiring, and recognizable film scores in cinematic history,” Topilow said. “Whether drama, science fiction, patriotism, action, adventure, comedy, or despair, he always finds the perfect mood. It is a great joy to perform his music, and we look forward to a wonderful concert.”

[Read more…]

Threadgill’s Pathways with Zooid & Oberlin Ensemble at CMA (Jan. 11)

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by Nicholas Stevens

“The music as always speaks its own language.” In a program note for his new piece Pathways, Henry Threadgill names places and people who inspired him, yet declines to describe the music or the process behind it. Immersion in the 90-minute work feels like watching a non-narrative film in a familiar yet unknown language. What the committee for the Pulitzer Prize for Music recognized when they honored Threadgill in 2016 was the unique vitality of this invented language. In its world premiere outing on Friday, January 11, Pathways unfolded like a hive intelligence fleshing out its own original, complex definition of beauty.

[Read more…]

Fresh Perspectives to present Ohio premiere of Contralto

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by Mike Telin

What is a percussionist? What is a woman? These two questions will be examined on Friday, January 25 at Glo Cleveland, when Fresh Perspectives presents “I Am,” a celebration of identity through art and music. The evening will feature the music of percussionist/composer Sarah Hennies, including the Ohio premiere of her groundbreaking work Contralto, for video, strings, and percussion. The work features a cast of transgender women vocalizing over a live musical score.

The program will also include Hennies’ Everything Else for four or more performers and Settle for vibraphone (two players), performed by Hennies and Justin Gunter. Attendees can enjoy a new generative video installation by Brooklyn-based Natalie Braginsky and a poetry bar hosted by Cleveland-based poets, offering made-to-order poems you get to take home. Food and drinks are available. Tickets are available at the door on a sliding scale of $5 to $15. Doors open at 6:30 pm — 2460 Lakeside Avenue, Cleveland.

On her website, Hennies writes that Contralto — “defined in musical terms as ‘the lowest female singing voice’ — uses the sound of trans women’s voices to explore transfeminine identity from the inside and examines the intimate and peculiar relationship between gender and sound.” Click here to view a four-minute trailer.

[Read more…]

Les Délices and the Newberry Consort decode the Leuven Chansonnier (Jan. 20)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Understanding the tradition of Courtly Love (the solely poetic, unconsummated passion between a knight and a married noblewoman) as expressed in French music of the 15th century (sparse, ornate, and replete with artifice) is a reach for 21st-century audiences. But Cleveland’s Les Délices and Chicago’s Newberry Consort brought some of the repertoire preserved in the recently-discovered Leuven Chansonnier to vibrant life on Sunday afternoon at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. [Read more…]

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